Limitations on the size and number of carry-on luggage, as well as security requirements, make air travel by commercial aircraft while carrying a full size acoustic guitar difficult. There are numerous designs for a portable guitar. To one extent or another, these designs involve collapsing and nesting various components of the guitar to allow packing into a luggage suitable to carry onboard an aircraft. However, all such designs require complicated re-assembly and re-tuning. More importantly, such designs have inferior sound quality compared to a conventional (i.e. non-portable) acoustic guitar.
A conventional acoustic guitar produces sound by way of the strings vibrating and transmitting their vibrations to the body of the guitar. The body amplifies the sound and the sound comes out of the sound hole. The back, top, and sides of the instrument are carefully constructed and braced to accept the considerable string tension, and yet still produce pleasing music and tone. Structural integrity is of utmost importance for the sound quality, yet it is extremely difficult to achieve with collapsible and nesting designs. Additional structural elements, such as extra bracing and connections between parts, which are not present in a conventional acoustic guitar, cause further deterioration of the sound quality.
The collapsible and nesting designs also suffer air leakage between various parts, which is not present in a conventional acoustic guitar, where air can only escape through the sound hole. Air leakage causes additional deterioration of the sound quality.
Simply put, a portable acoustic guitar should be, ideally, as close in its structural integrity to and differ as little as possible from a conventional acoustic guitar.
Finally, the prior art does not utilize the volume inside the guitar body for storage of items, other than parts of the guitar, while traveling. This unutilized real estate can be used for storage and make travel via a commercial aircraft less difficult.
Accordingly, there is a need for a portable travel guitar that overcomes the limitations of the prior art.